Main Person Of Mass Destruction Discussion

This becomes a vital plot point, since, once outside of the games-verse and inside of the internet, his beam attack charge limit is literally unlimited: he can charge to a level high enough that it is literally impossible for every computer on the internet combined would be incapable of calculating it, meaning that just by powering up enough and releasing, he can destroy the internet... and everything in it.

I don't think it works that way; even out of his game, he's on a computer, and can only charge his attack to the maximum value available on that computer. Since he's on a 32-bit computer, the value is 2^32-1 (unless he happens to be on a 64-bit one, in which case it's 2^64-1). Plus, even if what you say were possible, just charging the attack would have taken an impossible amount of time; finally, if all the Internet's computers couldn't compute the attack - how could the computer he's on do? He'd never be able to fire.

Watch the Trope Decay here. I'm seeing plenty of potholes to this article which simply amount to "He can launch a Fantastic Nuke" or "He has a high Super Weight" without the element of "He's used as a tool", as well as a few examples which borderline on the above by having questionable "He's a tool" elements.

MorningStar1337

06:50:27 PM May 4th 2013

We have decided to make a new trope for the "he's a tool examples and are working on the description now.

Stock Superpowers is the supertrope. Individual superpowers get their own tropes, they don't get shoehorned into that one.

IndirectActiveTransport

08:55:34 PM Apr 3rd 2014

Okay, so how is this an individual super power? As of now this is just "super powers that cause a lot of damage", which should not be considered page worthy.

SeptimusHeap

04:03:16 AM Apr 4th 2014

Person that can cause a lot of damage, to be exact. And these are page worthy - they are frequently the source of conflict and plot in stories.

IndirectActiveTransport

01:55:05 PM Apr 19th 2014edited by 69.47.43.173

People with super powers in general are frequently the source of conflict in stories. Take leech in X-men, he becomes the focal point of the human/mutant conflict but his powers are hardly "mass destructive" in the literal sense.

Under the old definition, he would have counted well enough anyway as a human who is used like a tool, as a metaphor weapon usage. Why are tropers so literal minded? The characters with "actual" mass destructive powers in the movie, Magneto and Phoenix, are just a homicidal rebel and a confused schizo no one wants to be on the wrong side of, they're super powers are not especially notable in the story so stock super powers is all that is worth mentioning. Even the Sebastian Shaw example seems more like a power hungry super villain than, you know, anything worthy of a page beyond stock super powers. He just has energy absorptionup to eleven.

SaltyWaffles

01:32:21 PM Mar 2nd 2015edited by SaltyWaffles

If anything, I'd argue that defining this trope is all about the 'relative to the setting' metric.

If a specific person is, for whatever capability/power/potential, capable of effectively causing mass destruction on a strategic scale (not necessarily "obliterate everything within a huge radius" destruction, but massive damage on a large scale, even if it is totally selective), whereas very few people in the setting are capable of such, then this trope would apply.

A person does NOT have to be a literal tool to qualify for this trope. Hell, given the nature of this trope, the idea is to NOT treat them as tools, because you really want those persons of mass destruction to LIKE you, be loyal to you, to be indebted to you, because they are each an independent strategic WMD that can change loyalties (or refuse orders) at the drop of a hat, if they so chose.

Case in point: Tatsuya Shiba, from The Irregular At Magical High School. The guy was, effectively, a child soldier of his own volition until the war ended, and in the time since then he's fleshed out his fundamental/most advanced ability into arguably the most effective WMD in the world. And yet, the military treats him very well, with both a number of his old comrades and his old/current commander being very nice to him, looking out for him, and treating his Pof MD capabilities with all due seriousness and caution—if anything, THEY are much less willing to consider the use of Third Eye than Tatsuya himself is. His friends, his sister, his classmates, and his coworkers all genuinely like him and think of him entirely as a person, rather than merely a strategic asset or weapon. Ironically, most of his family DOES think of him as a tool...but for reasons that have nothing to do with his Person of Mass Destruction capabilities.

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